OF BUTTER AND BOULES

WHAT MAKES THE FRENCH HAPPY?

While Charles de Gaulle and his wife were lunching with British prime minister Harold Macmillan, Mrs. Macmillan asked timid, diminutive Madame de Gaulle to what aspect of the general’s forthcoming retirement she looked forward with greatest anticipation.  

"A penis," she replied without hesitation.

The baffled silence was interruped by de Gaulle.

"Yvonne, my dear," he murmured, "I believe it’s pronounced 'happiness’."

When it comes to happiness, it seems that, whatever excites pleasure in the French, they are getting it, since 68% of those polled recently declared themselves “happy” and 32% even “very happy”.

Why, then, ask baffled visitors, are manifs or massed demonstrations such a feature of public life?  

The French taste for disputation is, its true, hard to explain but it can be a mistake to believe that it represents deeply held convictions. Try seeing it as locals do - more sport than protest;  a chance to get out and enjoy a walk and meet friends, with no greater political content than a visit to the gym.

A stroll in the sun and a selfie. Typical Paris manif.

The concluding rally always winds up early, allowing people to get home, pay the sitter, and shower before dressing for the restaurant. With the text of speeches leaked well in advance, the press seldom attend. If action’s needed for the evening news, cameramen rendezvous with a few rowdies who, liberally lubricated with Stella Artois, topple some dustbins and maybe smash a window or two.

City manifs, mostly organised by the more militant unions, get the headlines, overshadowing the smaller local protests that are a weekly occurrence. These are much more fun – and more indicative, I think, of what concerns ordinary people.  

Recently, for example, students in Normandy rose in collective wrath at the decision to serve only unsalted butter in university canteens. Salted butter would still be available, but for a surcharge.  The reaction was swift and, some might feel, excessive. Who would be so unfeeling as to curtail the enjoyment of this product of French industry, or deny a Norman the rightful accompaniment to his daily baguette? Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons, Marchons, marchons!

Beurre demi-sel is one of the great successes of millennial cuisine, offering vigorous competition to the traditional beurre doux. As well as at table and in home cooking, it’s used in many proprietary foods, particularly “salted caramel” confectionery and ice cream.

Embedded with fleur de sel – the powder-like flower of the salt, swept from the surface of the pans where seawater evaporates -  it’s perceived as more authentic, more artisinal – ­home-made.   Rival varieties, each with its partisans, incorporate salt from Usigny, Guerande and half a dozen other locations along the Channel and Atlantic coasts.  

At such trendy food stores as Bon Marche’s Grande Epicerie, they sell it in bulk, carving wedges from a domed block that mirrors the bowl into which a farmer’s wife would once have scraped it from the churn. Even commercial brands groove and decorate their product, as if those wooden bats and moulds once used to shape butter aren’t more common in antique shops than farm kitchens.

 Closer to home, a conflict has arisen over another ornament of French culture. A poster displayed all over Montmartre shows a typical soft-capped Parisian crouched in the characteristic pose of the player of pétanque,  about to launch his heavy metal boule across a stretch of uneven and stony ground towards the marble-sized jack. Next to him is the warning “Touche pas à mon CLAP” – Don’t touch my CLAP.

CLAP stands for Club Lepic Abbesses Pétanque, Montmartre’s longest-established boules association. Its 257 members - boasting, they point out, more women than any other club – range in age from 12 to 90.  Play takes place on public land leased from the council. Its eight courts get most use on weekends and in good weather, but are often deserted – cue for the mairie to look around for developers. A hotel company expressed interest. (Just what Paris needs. More hotels.) CLAP members, at least as passionate as proponents of beurre demi-sel, protested vigorously. There have been manifs, petitions, reports on television and in the press.

Are these matters that should concern us in such troubled times? Shouldn’t we rather address the Ukraine and global warming and the risk of another pandemic?

Well, it’s worth remembering that, on January 8th, 1968, as François Missoffe, Minister of Youth and Sports, opened a new swimming pool at the University of Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, a student, Daniel Cohn-Bendit,  enquired why male students were not permitted to visit their girlfriends in the female dormitories. Missoffe ducked the question.

 Danny “The Red” Cohn-Bendit explains it all to Jean-Paul Sartre.

In March, Cohn-Bendit, aka “Danny Le Rouge” – fortuitously, his red hair matched his politics - led an occupation of those dormitories. By May, the movement begun by his Committee of March 22nd had brought France to a standstill and reverberated around the world.

When one thinks of what tea did for the American revolution… perhaps we should reserve judgment on the political value of butter and boules.